Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World

On Being Afraid of Bears

m 93 On Being Afraid of Bears A branch cracks, over by the water. Another branch snaps, closer this time, on the game trail next to the marsh. Is a moose blundering into camp through the dark? A lost canoeist? Or is it a bear, heaving its weight along a trail filled with deadfall? My books say not to be afraid of bears, and so does Frank. Black bears aren’t bloodthirsty carnivores, everybody says; they eat like birds—fruits and berries, insects,grassandflowers,youngnestlings(iftheypresentthemselves), or ants. But I’m skeptical: if bears eat like birds, they must eat like ravens or bald eagles or sharp-shinned hawks, and what comfort is that? If a bear is making its way into camp, reaching with its nose for the smell of food, can it smell us? We tied the food bag ten feet in the air, stringing it up with elaborate care, but then we pitched our tent and laid our meaty carcasses across the trail. So here I am, enclosed in a tent far out in the wilderness, trying to calculate the size of an animal from the volume of the snap, trying to compute the degree of danger from the distance of the sounds. A few pine needles drop onto the tent and slide down the side. A twig falls through a tree, tapping against branches, ticking leaves, landing with a small thump. A mouse scuffs around, the way mice do, but the loudest sound is a noise like a wooden boat creaking against a dock—a sawyer beetle’s grub, grinding pine roots into sawdust. I nudge Frank awake. “If a bear comes, do we chase it away, or do we let it roam around camp?” 94 m Holdfast “Just enjoy it,” he says, and goes back to sleep. Irritated, I listen to the sounds of Frank’s body breathing, air passing through soft tubes, sloughing over membranes, whispering in and out, like water lapping on stones. Sometimes, when Frank is very quiet at night, the silence wakes me up. Then, unsettled, I roll over and put my head on his chest. Ear to rib, I hear his heart pop and push, blood moving through his veins wetly, like startled fish through reeds. I press a tiny button on my watch and light shines over the dial. 10:43 P.M. It’s starting to get cold. I pull up the zipper on my bag. A frog groans off somewhere toward the water, a sound like sex heard through a motel wall. I’m surprised the cold hasn’t silenced the frog, but I’m grateful to hear an animal I don’t have to be afraid of. Twigs, for once, have stopped snapping. I lie woodenly, staring in the direction of the side of the tent, as if I could see it in the dark. “Can animals sleep with their eyes open?” This is the sort of question you can ask Frank. “Yes,” he had said. “Whales do. Mammals that sleep at sea, whales and dolphins and sea otters, sleep with only half their brains at a time. The hemispheres take turns—one standing guard while the other sleeps. So sometimes they sleep with one eye open, the eye connected to the hemisphere on watch.” Look how carefully he explains. “Fish?” Do fish sleep, glassy-eyed in a rolling, glassy world? “Yes, fish sleep. At least, they exhibit sleeplike behaviors.” “Do you think that fishes dream?” Frank hesitated, always the careful scientist. “Probably not. It takes a pretty big brain to dream. Probably when a fish is in a sleep state, there’s nothing much going on in its brain at all.” I think of a bluegill floating quietly, dreaming still, silty dreams— nothing but green static with a skim of starshine at the surface. Dark shadows gather beneath the little fish, gauging its size and distance. One shadow separates from the others and rises slowly toward On Being Afraid of Bears m 95 the bluegill. Splashing waves, sound waves, sudden brain waves, a wave of panic. Unable to close its eyes, how does a fish know the difference between awake and asleep, danger and nightmare, outside and inside, light and dark, air and water, reality and appearance? Two universes merge, swirling like water under a canoe paddle, into a vortex that drags into a stream of bubbles and starlight. A beaver slaps its...